Archives for posts with tag: mood

A puppet called Dipstick

November 21, 2012 //

May I introduce: Dipstick! The new puppet, that’s me – I admit it!… For all my second language readers: no need to look the word up in the dictionary, once you have read the post you will know what it means.

It was one of those days yesterday – you know what I am talking about – absolutely nothing goes right. Okay, this is not entirely true as “those days” don’t really exist. There are just days, when the negative is unfairly pronounced while the positive fades into the background. I call “those days” puppet days now. The first client set me off…. Never a good start to the day. And it continued until seven at night, when it was time to go home. As it was such a frustrating day, I decided to take some work home… Doh…, How is that for punishment? No really, I wanted to take home one of the projects where I have free reign creatively. For me that is the best way to relax.

And here the story starts: To take work home I needed to transfer a few files onto – I am a bit of a fossil – a memory stick. The only one I could find had a fault. It still could be read and as the info on it was unimportant I thought I would quickly format it… That will do the trick.

Format… Done!

Oh, You haven’t….!

Yes, I have…

I have formatted my 300 odd Gigabyte external hard drive on which I keep all my personal art projects. It is a virtual studio and as big a creative mess as the physical one, oh dear! You might not believe me but that is a real account of what happened. I was so exhausted from the day that I didn’t even have the energy to explode – what use would this be anyway?

So, phone call to good mate: “How do I get my files back on a formatted hard drive?”

“You can’t”

“Yes I can, it only renders the FAT unreadable” Thanks to my elephant memory (usually more of a curse than a blessing ), this info was stored away somewhere in the grey matter…

Phone call to hubby: “Dinner will be late!”

So I go on the Internet and luckily find a program on the first try.

Ha, ha – Note! Luck on a puppet day! I have to point this out so not to despair.

So I download and start the program. It takes over 3 hours to collate the information. I let it run, go home, cook dinner, watch a bit of brainless TV, go back to work. Program is just finishing collecting the info. Six more minutes, I can wait for that…

Then it needs to build the file tree and tells me it can take hours. Luckily it is finished in under ten minutes…. All I need to do now is click the “Restore” button. But what does the program tell me after I have done that? “Yes there are files, but the free version of the software can only recover 100 MB.” That’s laughable…100 MB is not even one of my high res layered photoshop files.

So basically it works. I see the file names on screen, but I have to download the full version. 100 NZ$ is a small price to pay for being a Dipstick. So I obtain a code to continue. Shouldn’t take long… Wait for the email…. Code arrives….Copy into box on screen.

Code doesn’t work. The instructions say it can take a few minutes before it is active. So wait….

I try again… It still doesn’t work… Wait…. Try again… Still doesn’t work… Wait…. Try again…. You get the picture. I feel like Homer S – Doooh!

I find a few spelling mistakes in the program while I wait. This doesn’t bode well. Spelling mistakes, in my opinion, are a sign of sloppiness. I hope they took more care of the coding, but now I have paid my $100 can’t do much about it! In the end I download the program again via a link from the code email. Copy the code in here – it works – but it has to re-read the entire hard drive. It tells me this will take over 3 hours. Sounds familiar… I am at Square 1.

I haven’t been in to work yet. I write my posts before breakfast. If you hear a scream in an hour or so, that would be me!

Should any of my students read this post: Yes, guys it happens to me too :)

Needless to say the puppets kept a low profile. They are masters in reading my moods!

Tags art, blog, digital art, digital imaging, life, mood, reflections, story, thoughts

Categories Art, Fun, Life

Home coming

November 20, 2012 //

I am so happy… our heroes from the “Wallace Art Award” came back home yesterday. All the Dedes were excited and organised a ticker tape parade for their return. But boy, were our five travelers exhausted. Actually only four were exhausted and guess who was the chirpy one?

“Aliens don’t sleep”, a very grumpy Liar told me, and I think he was telling the truth for a change.

Alien had wanted to party all night, every night! And since the other artworks were very different and a bit stand-offish, he pestered his four friends, who gradually turned into his enemies. Ms SM, who can be a night owl herself, said they got so annoyed with him they even hatched a plan to push him aside, but he fell off his stick instead. They felt bad about that, but luckily he didn’t break. The next morning the curator came along and put him back up. So they got a few hours reprieve, but didn’t dare try again. From then on they just gritted their teeth. They all agreed it was extremely difficult to live together in those crammed conditions for such a long time (they were away for six weeks). And they pledged never to go on holidays with friends again.

Very much to the disappointment of the Dedes who stayed at home, all the returnees retired early last night. Only Alien was prepared to tell a few more tales, but he had to make a quick phone call first and so went into the garden. When he didn’t come back for ages everybody toddled off, rather disappointed.

What a fizzer of a party! Some of them agreed we will have a proper home coming party on Saturday. If the travelers are up to it, that is!

Tags art, character traits, Characters, creative writing, dede puppets, friends, imagination, life, mood, personalities, relationships, story, story telling, vacation

Categories Art, Fun, Hand Puppets, Life, Relationships

Failed reunion

November 19, 2012 //

Yesterday, Chance invited her half-sister Detail and her niece, Minor, for a picnic on my yoga mat. They hadn’t seen each other for months. These two sisters have a really strange love/hate relationship and I normally wouldn’t comment on anything family related, as the puppets can get very defensive when you talk about a close relative.

I have admitted it before, I favour Chance over Detail. Chance is much more relaxed. She doesn’t mind if you ignore her when you are otherwise engaged. She just shrugs her shoulders and says: “Your loss not mine” and leaves.

Detail on the other hand has a knack for driving me up the wall (particularly when I am already stressed). She always wants to have it done her way! Don’t get me wrong, it is good to know her and in less stressful situations – when I have plenty of time and can pay her enough attention – she is really, really lovely. You just need to know how to take her. Let’s face it, Detail wants to be super woman. She is a solo mum and it can’t be that easy with a teenage daughter like Minor. And I suspect she is only so finicky because she actually lacks confidence. She gets a lot of security by spending an exorbitant amount of time on precision.

Bring on Chance the airy fairy one and, I mean, honestly… any outsider can see that this can’t go well. But what can you do if it is family? Well, one thing is for sure, I want to stay out of their arguments. If you get caught in the middle….

Often their bone of contention is around Minor. Chance doesn’t have kids of her own, so she dots on Minor when she can. Unfortunately Detail thinks Minor has picked up a few bad habits from her aunty. In particular, this very aggravating “wha-ever” response.

Back to yesterday…

True to herself, Chance was late, fifteen minutes or so. This of course set Detail off on the wrong foot. When Chance finally arrived with a bowl of prezel bows, Minor (who has a slight weight issue) dived with her hands into the bowl before it was placed on the mat. Detail exploded immediately, telling her daughter she should pay more attention to her appearance. Chance tried to defuse the situation and said teenagers have to eat a lot.

Detail jumped up and said, “you always undermine what I am doing”, grabbed Minor by the wrist and dragged her out the door.

Chance popped a pretzel bow in her mouth and said: “Ah well. I guess that is it for the next six months”

That was the shortest family reunion I have ever seen!

Tags art, character traits, Characters, creative writing, dede puppets, imagination, life, mood, personalities, Philosophy, relationships, story, story telling

Categories Art, Fun, Hand Puppets, Life, Relationships

Let’s give it a go!

November 16, 2012 //

The Dedes have made themselves scarce after my outburst two days ago. I really think it wasn’t that big an outburst to justify their reaction. I just told them what was on my mind and you should be able to do this amongst friends, shouldn’t you? I wanted to give them an idea about how to improve themselves and education is always a good thing, isn’t it? But judging from their reaction I must have hurt them a lot!

Philosopher is the only Dede who still speaks to me apart from Bad Conscience (the guy I am not so keen on). Philosopher told me they always believed our relationship was based on mutual love and respect, but my outburst indicated that my love for them was somewhat lesser than theirs for me. But he added in his opinion there is no way you can measure love, he was only the bearer of the message. This is his style of telling me the subject is not open for discussion. He has no mandate to speak on behalf of all the Dedes. And he added: “I personally love you all the way to the moon and back.” It was heart warming and I had to give him a hug, even though he is not the huggy type of puppet.

While we were having our conversation something was going on at the front door. At first I ignored it. It sounded like an entire army of rats or possums or cats were running over the front porch. But then I heard whispering as well and I knew the Dedes were up to something. I had to ask Philosopher.

“They are doing a Dharna” he said. I looked at him blankly.

“They didn’t know either what it was, but Arindam suggested it to them. You know their friend from India? He seems to think it is an effective method to get an apology from you!”

He told me that after Arindam had planted the idea, Mouse had invited them all to the kitchen to look up on the internet about how to do a Dharna. They figured out a Dharna is a means to show the world that somebody had not treated them in a just way. So, they have to go to the offenders house and fast on the doorstep until they get justice or die.

I’m sorry if they got it wrong, it was their first attempt and they had to learn it via the internet. When they voted on whether they should go ahead, Devil immediately said he thinks it is basically a good idea, but with his love for food, there is no way he could participate. He suggested to send Skeleton Edeltraut to my doorstep, as she doesn’t eat anyway. Even though they thought it was a brilliant idea, they all agreed one puppet on my doorstep wouldn’t have much effect. After all, they all had been offended by me. In the end they decided there are enough Dedes to divide them up into groups and take 8 hour shifts. As long as Skeleton Edeltraut was always there, surely no passerby would notice that they had swapped. And then they went to bed to start in the morning.

The first shift is out there now.

Tags art, Characters, creative writing, dede puppets, friends, imagination, life, mood, personalities, Philosophy, relationships, story, story telling

Categories Art, Fun, Hand Puppets, Life

Identity crisis

November 14, 2012 //

It is not all honkie dory in the Dede household at the moment. The Dedes and I are not on particularly good speaking terms for the time being. I told them about a blog I came across, written by the German artist Jürgen Küster. He writes his blog together with his Alter Ego art figure Buchalov (there is an English translation at the bottom of each post).

My very first thought (cross my heart!) was: Isn’t that typical, here is a man – all he needs is one (1) figure to discuss all the issues. Then here I am (female) and I need at least thirty (30)! and still don’t come to a conclusion.

But then there are more differences. Buchalov is very supportive of his artist. As I understand it, he critiques the work of Jürgen in a helpful way. He is more like a mentor. They have deep and meaningful conversations, beneficial to the artist’s progress.

Oh, I wish I could have a deep and meaningful conversation with my lot, but no… intellectual the Dedes are not! Look at them, they are all over the place. All they want to have is fun. And when they get into a pickle, it is me who has to bail them out. No support from them at all. They are unruly little creatures. Even worse, whenever I say something, they say “Yes, but…” and then they give me this long spiel about why I can’t be right!

So I got a bit annoyed with them yesterday. I said they should be a bit more considerate. They are living in my house and it would be very kind if they wouldn’t challenge everything I say. Then I pointed to the art books on the shelf and said they should go and study for a bit. They looked at each other and said: “What’s wrong with her today?” and disappeared, leaving the art books behind. Only Philosopher continued his nap on the sofa unfazed.

“I will sell you all and only keep one!” I called after them.

“No you won’t” a voice from the sofa replied

Tags art, Characters, creative writing, dede puppets, friends, images, imagination, life, mood, personalities, relationships, story telling, thoughts

Categories Art, Fun, Hand Puppets, Life

Poor Puppy Day

November 7, 2012 //

I should declare the 6th of November “Poor Puppy Day”. We all know fireworks scare the wits out of animals, but Lou has taken Guy Fawkes particularly badly this year. While Cat and Mouse are back to their usual business, Lou is still lying on the sofa under the blanket and feeling sorry for himself. He has done so all day yesterday. Okay, he is young and he suffers from mood-swings: One week he is totally over the moon and it is all happy, happy, joy, joy. The next week he is lethargic and doesn’t move an inch from his chosen patch. I have to be honest with you here, seeing the young puppy like this makes me feel extremely uncomfortable, as I don’t know what to do when he is down. Shall I just leave him to it or shall I talk to him? I haven’t figured it out yet.

Tomorrow Bobby and Clay Head will come around and interview us about the email. Maybe I should ask Bobby if there is a chance to train Lou as a sniffer dog. A bit more routine might help.

Tags art, character traits, Characters, creative writing, dede puppets, imagination, life, mood, personalities, story, story telling

Categories Art, Fun, Hand Puppets, Life, Photography

Now he is grumpy

October 15, 2012 //

Sure enough, On Sunday the weather was much better (at least between the showers). Devil pestered me all morning to go on our outing. I did not have the time, I really couldn’t fit him in. In the end he got very miffed with me. He didn’t leave the sofa at all but made heaps of snide remarks while I was pacing up and down the hallway trying to get organised. At one stage I had enough and told him off for his upsetting behaviour. When I talked to him he looked a bit meek, and now he is curled up in the corner of the sofa and feeling sorry for himself. He will be okay when I come home tonight. I am sure he will be back to his devilish self in no time. But seeing him how he is right now, makes me feel really bad…

Tags art, Characters, dede puppets, friends, hermit, images, mood, photography, story, story telling

Categories Art, Fun, Life, Relationships

Stand out

October 11, 2012 //

Focus on the difference! This is another contender for Silent Week.

Tags allegory, art, images, life, mood, nature, neck of the woods, photos, reflections, story, thoughts, vacation

Categories Art, Life, Photography

End of Silence

October 6, 2012 //

Silent week is over. I thoroughly enjoyed choosing the black and white images for my blog and I might continue with it for a while. The image today was taken on Coromandel peninsula. You might have noticed that many of my images show deserted places and low clouds. It is not a feature I am searching for, it is just sooo New Zealand. In Maori the land is called Aotearoa, which means “land of the long white cloud”. When there is a thick layer of fluffy sheep clouds I often have the feeling of being under a lid in a huge toy world.

In real life, the production of puppets has slowed right down as life has taken over, but I am slowly getting back into the right mind-set. My next two projects are a puppeteering workshop with the Older Women Network in Auckland early next month, and I am also working on an exhibition of puppets. The exhibition is firmed up in my head and I now have to find a venue.